This post is #8 in the series, Starting in Partnering: What most Tech CEOs get wrong. Click here to read previous post #7 Partner Enablement: A Glaring Gap or a Shocking Shortfall?
It’s difficult to talk about Partner Management, without overlapping on other typical mistakes and challenges in Company Culture, Partner Enablement, the Partnering Team and more. These are covered in other articles in the series.
Different company cultures approach partner management differently, from trying to manage as part of the sales team to being the best intentioned for the partner’s success. Are we trying to Manage the partners when we should be Supporting the partners? BUT do we know how to support the partners?
The typical ‘misunderstandings’ in Partner Management for Tech CEOs in starting in partnering are:
• Partners don’t want to be ‘managed’
Maybe the misunderstandings start with the term “Partner Management”. ‘Managed’ implies they need to be kept in line, kept focussed and working hard to meet their agreed targets. ‘Managed’ implies the partner is working for the vendor, and doesn’t speak ‘Partnering’.
•“You’re Onboarded Now. Let us know if you need anything.”
As covered in the previous post, Onboarding is typically overwhelming and too much too soon for the partners. The Partner Management sins here are assuming the partners have everything they need, and that the partners know what they need.
Partners don’t know what they need. The vendor is supposed to know what is needed. Managing the combination of vendor and partner capabilities is the challenge to create the joint opportunities.
•Partner Plans: “How much will you sell for us?”
Many partnerships fail due to the lack of a plan be implemented at agreements stage or immediately following. Many skip quickly over planning due to not knowing what should be done.
A partner’s revenue target can’t be managed, and months later before the real issues arise and maybe too late to save the partnership. As detailed in the previous post #7 Partner Enablement: A Glaring Gap or a Shocking Shortfall, the support required for the partner is underestimated.
Partner Plans assume too much in the partners readiness, overwhelm the partner with new products to learn, push too fast for results while providing too little detail to measure and manage.
•Forecasting Revenues from Partners: “Your guess is as good as mine”
A predictable forecast enables business leaders to plan better. Within a company’s direct sales, practices can be put in place and track record of the salespeople allows companies to forecast to some level of accuracy. Forecasting through partners adds the layers of complexity of you don’t know the partners salespeople practices and you don’t know the salespeople.
Given that your solution is only part of the partner’s business, an accurate forecast is less relevant for them.
Similar to the challenges at the Partner Agreements stage, how much does accurate forecasting future revenues improve the partner performance? Click here to read post #6 Partner Agreements – Over Protecting Some Future Pot of Gold.
•All Push and No Support: “Not understanding the partner’s business”
So many partnering mistakes come from Tech Leaders over focusing on what they get from the partnership.
Like so many things, when a person needs to push a relationship, we need to question if the joint purpose has been lost. We don’t fix a delicate machine with a hammer.
When business pressures mount on tech leaders, too often pressure that finds its way down to push the wrong levers in partnership relationships and cause damage. Understanding a partner’s business helps partner managers determine what levers they can pull, and how to affect change in a partner’s business behaviour.
•Partner Financial Incentives can be a crude and blunt instrument
Misaligned direct financial incentives can cause damage to a partnership relationship, showing a lack of understanding of the partner’s business focus.
“We’ll pay you €100k for a small number of good referrals that result in deals.” – Why did this offer get attention and best intentions but fail to motivate partners?
Your partners don’t work solely for financial reward, they work for their selected purpose and goals, and want to be rewarded for achievement in these goals. Generous financial incentives may get partners to consider changing their plans for a period, but aligned incentives will always produce better results.
The best teams seek to understand the partner’s business to assess the rhythm of their business to determine where and how to support, influence, and enable activities to drive joint-sales objectives. Understanding the rhythm of the partner’s business, and how much the vendors product fits within the partners business will determine the forecast. With this understanding, then where and how to influence, support and incentify can be determined to boost sales through the partner.
Read the next post in the series ‘Partner Portals and PRM: Technology is Not Enough to Fix a Broken Process – Starting in Partnering: What most Tech CEOs get wrong #9’